are you saying that the DPRK is a dictatorship of the bougeoisie?
The DPRK has purged all mentioning of Marxism and communism from its constitution. Whether or not it was socialist before the Arduous March began is subject to debate, but there can really be no question that today it is post-Thermidor. A Marxist analysis of the situation in DPRK can only yield the result that workers do not exercise political power in North Korea and that its government is not internationalist in scope. Benevolently ruling on behalf of the workers is not socialism. It may not have started out with that intent, but it's clear that "siege socialism" has here devolved into an outright abandonment of socialism altogether. Remember that political class is dictated by relations to production, but social class is not always. Even if the DPRK government makes life cozy for the workers it rules over, and imagines that it acts in their interests, that is not the same thing as the workers themselves controlling that production, their labour, or their surplus value! I agree that there can be a sort of grey area after revolutions in countries which possess no established proletariat of consequence, where the creation of a proletariat is itself a task which must be administered before the state can be actively and systematically made obsolete, but what you have to realize is that during that period, if the nascent proletariat exercises no control over production, then the vanguard party who does control it constitutes a
separate political class from them. They may be socially allied with the proletariat, acting on their behalf and in their interests as allies, but this is holding the tiger by the tail. How long can a class be composed wholly of class traitors, before some start acting in their own interests and not the proletariat's? This is why control must be handed over quickly by the vanguard. Yes there is a forgivable grace period where the counter-revolution must be suppressed; I understand very well how hard-pressed Sovnarkom was during the Civil War. But how long can that go on? In DPRK's case, it has gone on since 1945. We must accept that the Korean ruling party has failed to yield power to the proletariat, and thus at best remains socially allied with them, but in no way does that constitute a proletarian class dictatorship.
That's BS...Because if it is, why is the US so keen to squash it, while it lets Saudi Arabia get away with far more state murder than they claim DPRK does.
That question should be reversed: why does the US let Saudi Arabia get away with far more than it does DPRK? Because it has oil resources which it readily shares with the United States, and supports it politically in the region. DPRK does not do that and has no interest in doing that, and possesses large mineral reserves which the United States is denied. In addition, no permanent peace treaty exists between North Korea and the UN powers who participated (including the US), and the US remains against reunification of the two Koreas.
The United States doesn't behave morally, it behaves in its global economic interests. Those interests place it with Saudi Arabia and against DPRK.
whose 1950 "invasion," btw, was actually provoked by the US and its ROK puppet
First, provocation is never an excuse for anything. Actors must own their actions. Second, Stalin and Mao both advised Kim
against the invasion. Kim Il-Sung took an enormous gamble by going ahead anyway, and it almost worked.
Truth is not a function of in-group status.
Indeed. Let's not beat our chests, let's focus on analysis.
Nor I yours, TF. But who is the fanatasizer? The 22-year veteran of class war or the student/ retail worker who "learns" but leaves the hard work for everyone else?
This is very much a line of thought you do
not want to go down, my friend. Classist statements will convince no one of anything except your factionalism.
Posting a link to that most puerile of web comics, which spreads the message that struggle itself is a waste of time and effort which is doomed to failure because everyone on the Left are idiots, is not a great way to dispel the accusation of being juvenile.
